


Into Light

by Leytivia



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Root faked her death, Root is Alive, Shaw's grief, all that good stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2018-12-18 23:18:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11884956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leytivia/pseuds/Leytivia
Summary: Everything Shaw did was always enough for her. It takes Root a minute to tell Shaw this and a lifetime to show her. Root hopes only that it's not too late by the time she figures it out. This is an exploration of Shaw's grief, and it's every single time something she did was more than enough.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The first few chapters of this will be kind of dark, just a warning.

Shaw understands grief at a fundamental level. She understand why it happens, and she even understands the necessity of it for others. People seem so bonded to each other, from what she has observed, and broken bonds need repair. 

When her father died everybody was always trying to decipher what was wrong with her. They called it a coping mechanism. They commented on how strong and brave she was. She liked that. She liked being brave even though she did not quite understand what set her apart from everybody else. Then, as time wore on, bravery became ‘what’s wrong with her?’ As if they thought she was incompetent, and as if she couldn’t understand them. But she always heard the whispers. They never fooled her. Shaw was smart, and she knew she was different. The day of the accident when they wouldn’t tell her what happened to her father after asking over and over, she knew the answer. She knew he was dead and all she wondered was why they wouldn’t be straightforward with her.

That was just it, she had this thing. This thing that separated her from the rest. Sometimes she hid it and sometimes she didn’t. She knew how to charm people and she knew when to turn in on and off for her own good. People saw her as a monster sometimes. So be it, though, if she was so good at what she did.

She doesn’t feel and never did. Not in the way the rest of the world expected her to. This was her undoing at some point, it seemed. When she was a doctor she saw all of the things that drove people to make irrational decisions, loved ones, parents of sick children, people who wanted answers, people driven by grief that was intertwined with love. A love she knew she wasn’t capable of feeling. Amidst the suffering, it did seem like something great, to care for someone that much that it breaks you when they’re gone, or when they’re hurt, or when you lose them. But for so long the world tried to tell her that she was already broken.

When people were so fortunate to feel so strongly, why would they throw it around? Shaw would wonder, why didn’t they appreciate it?

For some, love, this bond, seemed to be all they had.

Shaw doesn’t know if she is grieving now. She has nothing to compare it to.

If she is, then grief is how you carry around the absence of something, or someone. Grief is when that absence becomes so loud and so daunting it feels little like an absence at all, like something is put in place of what is missing. A roaring silence, like when a room is so quiet you can hear the blood rushing in your ears, it’s constant and everywhere. It’s in every corner and every shadow, a reminder that something is missing, and that missing thing made the place better.

In the quiet of the night grief tries to creep its way into her, but she keeps shutting it. It presents itself as a disembodied voice, one that becomes less and less familiar as time wears on. She is too aware of the differences now. If comfort was something she needed, she wouldn’t find it there in that voice. As it presents itself as a mystery unsolved, and a war un-fought--though maybe for the better.

And grief is a face she sees that makes the silence grow so loud she wishes she would go deaf just to ignore it.

She knows Root is dead. She’s read the medical report, and knows nobody survives a wound like that. Nobody, not even Root. In the beginning she goes after anyone she can thinks she can blame. Killing Blackwell never felt like enough.

Shaw thinks about how Root tried to essentially bring down an empire to save her, and she can finish that for it. It’s the least she can do. Root saved her life, but at what cost now? Every face of Samaritan makes her blood boil. Root wouldn’t want her to kill them, but Root would kill them if it were the other way around. Root would do this, Root would do that. Root. Root. Root.

A name she thinks of a thousand times a day but never speaks out loud. A face she thinks of twice as often as that, and will never see again.

Sometimes she questions if she is just in another simulation. That feeling never completely goes away. She tells herself that if it were a simulation, then Root would be there. But Root is not and cannot be there, or anywhere, because Root is dead.

She’ll come work for them, she declares anyway, she’ll do whatever they want if they would just let this shitty simulation end.

It never does.

Finally, sometimes that silence is a bottle in her hand. It’s closing her eyes trying to tell herself that Root is really there while she listens to the machine rattle off comments in her ear. Her voice becomes more unfamiliar the more she listens to it. Quite literally like listening to the ghost of something real, of something more.

Her drunken state often leads her to the time when she was seconds away from ending it all before she got Root’s message. It was more than a long shot that she would even receive it, but Root believed in it. Root had so much hope, and Shaw only came to admire that after the fact. She believed there were a lot of admirable things about Root. Maybe it was selfish that what she found the most admirable was that someone could care about her so much.

And if someone cared for her so, maybe she would be able to care back.

She hasn’t cried since the time she thought she was saying goodbye to the machine forever. Crying not being something Shaw does. However, she feels a heaviness on most days and just wonders when it will go away. As if it ever  _ can  _ go away.

Even so, most days she carries on as normal, solving cases and chasing numbers with the machine buzzing in her ear. She’s gotten so used to it now, but every day there are moments. Moments when she’s frustrated because  _ Root would know how to do this, Root would know how to do that, she would know what to do.  _ And, if nothing else, she stubbornly won’t admit it when there are times she knows Root being there would be enough to level her head.

She finds Root connected to cases more often than she could ever anticipate. ‘ _ Root’  _ the machine will say to her, one syllable feeling like it can knock the wind out of her.

“ _ You never refer to her by her name”  _ The machine will say to her. This usually frustrates Shaw and she will respond with something short. Feeling frustrated, mostly because the machine is right. She doesn’t refer to her by name, she doesn’t and she won’t. Not until she can believe that Root died for something and that her name can hold some value. She doesn’t say her name because she doesn’t feel like she deserves to, and also, because it hurts. Every time in the past when she’d say it  _ to  _ Root the tone was always annoyed, or frustrated, or pushing her away. She doesn’t think she’d ever regarded it as anything else.

The name Root and the woman it belonged to was the thorn in her side. Until it wasn’t. Until  _ she  _ wasn’t. Someday, when she can truly believe that all the things left in Root’s wake are significant and worth it and leave the world better off than if Root were still in it, then she’ll say it. For now, it remains a thought.

Sometimes she thinks about the times after she lost her parents. And at some point in her adult life decided to never speak of them again. She believed this world was terrible, or that maybe they were better off. No matter what, it was easier this way, with nothing to speak of there is nothing to miss.

But with Root, there is so much to speak of.

If in life Root was the thorn in her side, in death she’s a knife through the heart.

Or a bullet.

She thinks about that a lot. Maybe more often than anything.

Life and death are relative to Shaw, people are here or they’re not and the world will keep spinning regardless. That’s how she likes to think, anyway.

But Root didn’t deserve to leave this world alone with no one to tell her it was going to be all right. The  _ very thing  _ that was Shaw’s downfall long ago, in another life. Back when she was told she needed to have more compassion for the dying, but the dying were just that to her, dying. It didn’t seem to matter whether she was there or not.

But it mattered whether she was with Root.

No one knew her name. Whoever was there probably asked, as they are trained to do, but Shaw knows better. She knows Root wasn’t able to respond. She was gone by then. Shaw does her best to avoid thinking about those final minutes, but her best is not always good enough. She knows how long it takes for a wound like that to drain the life from someone.

It’s not very long at all.

Then she’s put in a freezer to be forgotten. Matched to some records maybe, to a name that hasn’t belonged to her in years. Then the machine then destroying those records to protect her, even in death. As such, it didn’t work. They still got to her.

She thinks that’s the real kicker. In the end Root doesn’t get a damn thing. Shaw wants to find the people who took her body and rip them to shreds, then dump what’s left of them in a landfill like they probably did to her.

_ "Do you have any idea what they could have done with her?”  _ Shaw asks the machine one day, and has asked the same iteration of this question many times since.

_ “Not now,”  _ the machine would say, “ _ It’s going to be months before all of my information is restored. Maybe then.” _

‘Maybe then,’ a hopeful statement, but this time hope is not enough. They both know the truth. They’re never going to find her. Shaw wants to believe in the machine and there is no one the machine loved more than Root, and there is no one she cares about finding more than Root. But that’s not her priority now.

“ _ I’m sorry Sameen. I should have been more careful,”  _ the machine tells her one day after Shaw asks the same question.

_ “You couldn’t have known,”  _ Shaw tells her, given, she actually could have known, but she had a lot to deal with at the time.

_ “I’ll find her”  _ the machine tells her. Shaw shivers, some things are too jarring to hear in  _ her  _ voice. This is one of those things. Fortunately, the machine understand when Shaw needs space most of the time. Just like Root herself did.

In essence, it’s always jarring to be talking to a ghost. That ghost will say her name and make her question everything she does. Quite literally, her relationship with the machine makes her question her own sanity. Now she gets why everyone thought Root was crazy. Not that she didn’t, but things were different back then.

_ “Maybe tell the robot in your ear to be quiet for a minute and pay attention to the real world,”  _ Shaw had said earlier on in their...whatever they were. Maybe it was too harsh then, “ _ it’s annoying.” _

_ “It’s called dedication, Shaw,”  _ Root responds, unhurt by her comment, “ _ Besides, she is the real world.” _

Back then she didn’t know exactly what it was that Root saw as the real world, even now the answer isn’t so clear. Though, she has learned from what Root has left behind that the world is big but conquerable, and it’s harsh at times and fair at others, and those times have to be accepted for what they are. Root went from not believing in a single being, to believing in the world so strongly that she gave her life to see it thrive, to see it not taken down by evil. Her absence, however, is an evil all on its own. A wicked unfairness. That brings Shaw back to that absence, that void.

Sometimes she tries to fill the void with more alcohol. The sting of whiskey going down her throat is a welcome and much more manageable pain than the one that drove her to that point in the first place.

It never really has any profound effects on her, it doesn’t make her happy or weepy. Most of the time it doesn’t even make her any more or less angrier, nor does it amplify her will to act on it. One knows, she’ll do it anyway, inebriated or not.

Lately, she drinks to drown out the roaring silence from before. Not to forget, in fact the opposite. And she does it to lie to herself, so she can wake up the next morning and say she’s okay.

_ It’s been three months now. Since all of this began. _

One night, or early morning, she’s not sure, she succumbs to the effects of the whiskey, as well as whatever else she can find. She’s lost two numbers in a row, and it’s not that she has regrets but there are missing pieces to this puzzle that she knows one person is capable of solving. Her very own missing piece. It frustrates Shaw to leave things so incomplete. The machine can only do so much as she continues to restore herself to full functionality. Those missing pieces of Her are just as important as the big picture.

Before Samaritan they had a way of doing things that worked. Shaw always believed in finding a new way, but the picture isn’t as clear now, and she doesn’t know where to begin. So she lets herself take the edge of, for the missions she’s failed. And for Root.

She feels angry that Root can’t be there, angry at her, angry for her, angry that the machine--the all-seeing, godlike machine, still can’t come back from losing its most important component.

“Talk to me,” Shaw says to the machine, the hefty, even for shaw, quantities liquor finally soothing her frustrations and leaving her uninhibited.

“About what?” A voice asks, Shaw keeps lying to herself, keeps brushing off the differences to hear the authenticity of it. She wants to hear her voice. Not the machine’s voice, but Root’s.

“About anything,” Shaw says dryly and takes another sip.

“I think you’ve had too much to drink,” the machine tells her with concern and artificial inflection.

“I tell you what to do, remember?” Shaw responds. Granted, she would never imply something like this soberly. The statement is unfair, but the machine understands.

“Okay, Sweetie,” the machine concedes, using Root’s ever so favored term of endearment.

She tells her about some of the people they’ve helped. She tells her about the day’s news, and sports statistics, traffic, and the weather across the world, just because she can.

“How about some of that nerdy shit,” Shaw requests, taking long pauses to avoid slurring her words, drunk to a point of no return.

“ _ Nerdy shit  _ does not compute,” the machine replies sarcastically, and if Shaw would have had any less alcohol in her it probably would have annoyed her how a machine could even be sarcastic. For now, though, she lies in her bed and listens to Her talk some more about how to build a computer, maybe. She finds herself close to being unable to comprehend anything She says now. “I don’t think you should do that,” the machine scolds as she reaches for the bottle next to her one last time. Shaw listens this time, because now she sees Root so clearly in her mind, and Root wouldn’t want this for her. She thinks about how miserable she will feel in the morning, and how Root would bring her coffee that may or may not be spiked with something, because Shaw’s solution to a hangover is more alcohol. Who is Root to argue with that? But, unfortunately, Root won’t be there in the morning. She never is.

“Tell me about things she liked,” Shaw slurs, close to passing out but still she hanging on. The machine responds with silence, “what’s wrong?” She asks again in a hoarse voice.

“I can’t remember  _ everything, _ ”  the machine tells her with some reluctance, frustrating Shaw.

“I’m not asking for everything,” Shaw presses, “just,  _ something.” _

“She liked you,” the machine tells her, not like that’s news, but she says it with such conviction, “however, I don’t think she would like to see you like this.”

“That doesn’t matter much now, does it?” Shaw says darkly.

“I’m sure she’d be sorry for putting you through this,” the machine is trying to be comforting, she thinks. Comfort followed by a long pause until she adds, “I’m sorry I couldn’t save her, Sameen.”

“ _ It’s okay, Root.”  _ Shaw responds in a whisper seconds before slipping out of consciousness.

She won’t remember it, and the machine won’t mention it for now. She knows better. Appropriately, the first time she utters her name in months would only occur in a drunken state of mind. The machine gave her what she needed for the time being, it was enough.

Shaw won’t remember this. Maybe the situation is better that way. She will wake up in the morning and Root won’t be there. For a moment she can pretend, but in truth Shaw never was much of a pretender. For now, she’s drunk and she misses the only person she knows she was capable of caring about.

She misses Root.

Maybe there’s a better place where Root misses her back.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHECK OUT THIS COOL FAN ART FOR THIS CHAPTER BY BEE. THANKS!  
> https://78.media.tumblr.com/1bb0c7cbf4b9968e15f53fc8b33d3155/tumblr_ov4jj7Qjld1qatoreo1_500.png


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh so I'm doing an archaeology field school right now and somehow I have more free time than I ever have in my life. So I might be posting more of these over the next few weeks. WHO KNOWS. 
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me guys!!

She doesn’t remember in the morning. She remembers asking the Machine some weird questions and frankly she gets annoyed with herself for willingly relinquishing so much control. The Machine won’t give her a hard time, that’s not how She functions. The Machine probably understands whatever it was that drove Shaw to that point better than Shaw understands it herself. 

The Machine rattles something off while she makes herself coffee with vodka, and eggs. Shaw barely wants to listen to the machine, but has little energy to tell her to shut up. She puts up with it. The Machine tells her some of the best remedies for a hangover, Shaw tells her she’s fine. Like always. Just fine.

She goes about her day ignoring her pounding head the best she can, because frankly there are worse things. Only at the end of the day when exhaustion overwhelms her does she really start to think about the what the true consequences of the situation. A headache is a headache, but now ironically she has been made so painfully aware of her own suffering. She doesn’t remember thinking the machine was Root. But she remembers the consolation it brought to her. The idea that she even needs that kind of consolation makes her uneasy. Because it’s the very thing she tries to move away from every day, and most days are fine. They really are. But when they are not, they really are not. Now what plagues is how she even came to care so much. 

When Root told her that day in the safehouse, how she finally felt like she belonged, this stirred something deep inside of Shaw, but she couldn’t say how she felt then then. She can barely say it now, but before she was still so broken down by everything Samaritan had done and she didn’t know if she’d ever recover. She wanted to tell Root then, maybe she felt the same way too, but she didn’t and now it’s too late. 

That was the first time Root felt like she belonged and that was the first time Shaw felt like she cared about someone more than herself. 

‘I care about you, Root,’ How hard would that have been to say?

Even if she never knew all of the whys and hows as to what it means to care about someone, she thought she understood the foundations of it. But the foundations Root laid and have now crumbled beneath her, the foundations that she is trying to pick up the pieces of before she can build anything on top again. The foundation was Root. But she’s gone. 

And that’s fine, she thinks. The feeling so bitter. If she can’t care about Root, then she won’t care about anybody.

That’s fair. 

It’s a week later now and she gets drunk again. 

Her reasoning is, she got shot, so she deserves a shot. Or two, or a few more than two. It levels her head, so she thinks. The alcohol helps with the burning pain in her side. Just a graze she stitches up herself. Nothing new. She drinks until she becomes numb to all kinds of pain. It’s enough. 

She reaches a breaking point somewhere in the middle of the night, half driven by emotional despair, mostly driven by copious amounts of whatever she drank that night. Literally unable to hold her liquor she finds herself heaving so hard she pops her stitches open. The blood pours out of her again and she lets it. The stinging in her side worsens the nausea or maybe the other way around. Blood drips on the bathroom floor, she stays there bleeding and gasping for air and feeling just about as close to death as one could imagine, and she has been so close to death before.

And she thinks of Root. 

There are still things she doesn’t know about her death. Her best intellect knows it was quick, but was it quick enough? Or was it too quick, she didn’t even have a chance. From a textbook point of view she knows what someone who loses blood that quickly experiences, she knows how much pain she was probably in, and she knows the worst of it couldn’t have lasted long. 

But it was Root.

That bitter thought alone is enough to make her sick again. Still she ignores the gunshot wound. There is no possible way she could lose enough blood from that thing to kill her, she knows that, but if she doesn’t fix it up she’ll have an awful looking scar.

Not that the physical scars matter so much, all they do is provide tangible evidence of a wound that runs much, much deeper.

Eventually Shaw composes herself, she stitches and cleans herself up and gets into bed. The morning starts to break but she ignores it. She feels so awful, and it’s one of those things that rather rudely remind her that she is in fact a real person. A human who experiences human things even when she tries to deny it, and despite being less cold on the surface, Root was like this too. Yes, she found it annoying most of the time, but in the other times she liked that about her. In fact at that moment she can hear Root’s voice so clearly in her head telling her, “you’re not invincible, Shaw,” and back then she would ignore her and roll her eyes.

“Neither are you,” is what she would tell her now.

But she can’t. 

** ** **

“I have something for you,” the Machine says to her later the next day. This surprises her given the Machine has said few words to her since the night before. 

“You really shouldn’t have,” Shaw says coldly, followed by a long pause, “it’s about time you showed up.” 

More silence follows, it makes Shaw frustrated, “what’s wrong?” she asks.

“I found something, recovered some information,” the Machine starts, “I came across it last night but, that would not have been a good time to show you.”

Somehow a computer has managed to avoid her question, still hungover she is not in the mood. She knows the machine is waiting for her to say something so she lets her wait in silence for a minute. In truth, the Machine being so evasive can only mean one thing. Whatever the Machine has uncovered, or recovered really being the better term, can only regard one thing. 

“What is it?” She quietly asks then with a bit of resolve. 

“Sweetie…”

She cringes at the nickname, she cringes at how artificial it sounds, “What. Is it?” She replies then putting emphasis on each word, much more harshly this time. The Machine greets her with more silence. “Show me,” she then adds with finality and she walks into the subway car to sit in front of a screen.

On the screen she sees footage from a traffic camera, and the screen shows a barricade of police cars. It looks like a checkpoint. 

A car pulls up. She recognizes it. 

Two people are in the car, one gets pulled out. One does not. 

She realizes what she is watching now. 

She watches the officer standing over Root until the ambulance comes. She knows she should have been there instead.

She thinks she shouldn’t have let Root go at all, and it may be the most irrational thought she’s ever had. 

“Get him out of here or I’ll shoot you myself.” 

These words were her demise now. But at least Root had listened. 

She should have been there. Even if there was no way she could have been there without all three of them dying, she believes it anyway. 

Some final words. How ironic.

“What are they saying?” She asks the Machine.

“I don’t have that information…” she replies with reluctance, “maybe with a little bit more time.”

Over and over Shaw watches the scene. Over and over she watches her die from the view of a mediocre-at-best traffic camera. She watches them put her half dead in the ambulance, and she thinks about how unfair it was, everything that happened to her from then on out, and once again she thinks about how she died alone. 

Above all else, god damn, she wants to know what happened to her after that. 

“She didn’t deserve this,” Shaw sighs, “and I know you didn’t want this for her,” Her statement comes off as an apology, but maybe it reflects forgiveness too.

“I tried,” the Machine concedes, “there were no more possibilities.”

Shaw slouches in the chair after having her face practically glued to the computer screen, “at least she had you.”

Silence. Again. 

“God damn it,” Shaw whispers. This couldn’t get any worse.

“I was dying too.” 

This takes away whatever reserve Shaw might have had left. 

That’s the downside of talking to an AI who will never be anything but honest to a fault. 

Shaw found some solace in the idea of the machine being there, to some capacity, to give maybe just an apology. 

It breaks her, and she feels so strongly she retreats and start to wonder if this is another simulation.

However, in the simulations Root was always there, through the worst of it, Root was always there. 

From the day she was taken by Samaritan, simulation be damned, Root was always with her. She figured out early on that a simulation with Root was significantly more desirable than being strapped to a bed and tortured without her. 

In essence, they’re both terrible scenarios. But if she has to pick…

She picks Root. 

She suffers through nine months of traumatic simulations. Then she gets Root back for what, a few days maybe? 

She needs more time. They both lost nine months of their lives in their own respective ways. Do they not deserve more than a few days to think about what that means. Root hurt just the same in that time, she gets that now. 

Suddenly the machine speaks up, “she spent a lot of time sitting right where you are now, Sameen, asking me the same questions. I couldn’t give her answers, and I’m sorry I can’t give you answers,” she apologizes, “but, in the end the knowledge that you were okay was enough for her. She died knowing that you would be here to continue the work that she believed in. There is no one else she would want to leave that to.”

“Isn’t that nice,” Shaw then says darkly, but really she’s using whatever ounce of sarcasm she can muster to deflect what she really feels. 

The Machine ignores her and continues, “she knew what could happen that day. I didn’t have to tell her, and she knew how much you cared. That was enough for her.” 

Shaw furiously shakes her head, it’s not enough for Shaw, “they still got to her,” she says with anger. 

“I know sweetie,” The machine tells her, she sounds sad, “and I’ll find her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today I learned I don't know how to use a shovel. I'll stick to writing.

Shaw doesn’t dream much. She doesn’t sleep much in general, especially since samaritan. She constantly avoids it because of the way it compromises her grip on reality. 

When she does dream she dreams of Root. Rarely are the dreams vivid, but when they are, she sees images of Root’s mangled and lifeless body. She sees the many horrific things Samaritan probably has done to her, and she never gets any answers. 

There comes a day when she realizes she will never find her.

And she accepts it.

It’s been almost four months now. 

Case-wise, things have gotten better. She finds herself satisfied with being able to solve cases on end without much resistance. This drives her almost back to her normal self. Sure she’s still not sleeping, but that is normal for her. At least she’s not passing out drunk every other night. That has to count for something. 

However, even in her best efforts there are things she can’t control. With the machine still working on her recovery Shaw still feels alone most of the time. 

Another number slips through her fingertips and her frustration is building. 

She still needs Root. The Machine can do a lot but not everything, in a way the machine is almost too perfect and can’t always account for human error. Root and the Machine completed each other in that way. She needs Root. They both do. Shaw is tired of failing like this. 

The Machine buzzes suggestions in her ear all day and she mostly ignores them. At some point she becomes plain old fed up. 

She wants to drink again and only stops because the Machine scolds her. 

“Can you just...text me for the rest of today? I don’t want to hear her voice anymore,” her request comes off as cold. 

“Only if you promise to stop,” the Machine bargains, referring to the whiskey. 

“Fine,” Shaw relinquishes, and the Machine doesn’t say anything. 

It’s not that she doesn’t want to hear Root’s voice. It’s just that it’s an all or nothing kind of thing. So for now she’s fine with nothing. 

She sits down and muddles through papers of the latest case that’s causing her anguish. She doesn’t even have a name to go off of. Just some insurance records under what seem to be aliases, and the GPS coordinates to a bus stop. She found a notebook with some numbers in it that could be code or could be bullshit throwing her off. Considering that’s how she feels about everything lately. 

Her phone buzzes then, _‘I have something else for you to do tonight. You will have to go undercover.’_ A message reads.

Finally some excitement. 

The Machine continues to give her background information and instructions over text and eventually that becomes aggravating too. Everything is, “just go back to talking to me if you want, this is annoying.”

She remains silent anyway.

Until later that evening.

This is the first time she’s had to make herself look halfway decent for anything in months. In her sleeveless dress the only thing she can focus on are the scars and needle marks up and down her arms. It doesn’t bother her so much as it serves as a reminder she would rather not have. The rest of her makeup serves as a facade to make her think she doesn’t look half as shitty as she feels. 

A message reads on her phone that says _‘Your ride will be here soon.’_

“Whatever” she mutters to herself, “they can wait for me,” and she puts the phone down and picks up a tube of lipstick.

“Hey sweetie,” the Machine flirts, the first time Shaw hears from her since she talked to her earlier, “you look good.”

This gesture from the Machine is nothing unusual, but at that moment it catches her off guard. She hears a voice too familiar then. After months of being haunted by the fact that it sounded too foreign.

It doesn’t now. 

She puts the lipstick down, she looks down at the dresser, at her phone. She thinks of Root. She thinks of what Root would actually say if she were here right now. Something flirty, definitely something highly inappropriate. Then Shaw would brush her off and tell her to get her head out of the gutter. And Root would rescind and tell Shaw she looks beautiful. 

She always did. 

This scenario plays in Shaw’s head. She looks up at herself in the mirror. Underneath the eyeliner and the dark circles that she doesn’t even bother to cover anymore she sees something else, she looks tired, yes, and she looks sad. 

She doesn’t know if she’s ever seen herself look sad like this.

Root wouldn’t want to see her like this.

But if Root was there, she wouldn’t be like this. 

“Sweetie, the car is here,” the Machine tells her quietly, “I can tell them to wait.”

Shaw composes herself, “it’s okay,” she responds in a whisper. 

It’s not okay. 

She can’t fight it and that just makes her angry with herself. In truth this emotional state is one of those things that makes her question if she could be back in a simulation. She decides now if it is, they can keep her in it, she doesn’t care because nothing could be worse. 

But again, if it were a simulation. Root would be there. She knows it.

Root would be there. 

** ** **

She makes her appearance at this event anyway, not like she ever wouldn’t. 

The Machine is being vague as always as to why she was sent there. 

“Table ten, on your left,” the machine notes to Shaw. 

She turns and looks, “him?” she quips, “he’s not our number.” 

“He used to work for Samaritan,” The Machine informs her, Shaw clenches her water glass and she begins to stand up. “But you shouldn’t hurt him, Shaw, I can’t see much good coming from it” the Machine tells her than.

“Is he related to our number?” She asks agitatedly.

“Yes, but it’s just a coincidence,” The Machine concedes. 

“Like hell,” Shaw responds. She wants to reach for the gun strapped to her leg and get this guy on his knees in a back alley, even if not to kill him just to scare him for a second. Samaritan has been on the back burner lately, sure, but still she needs to tear every last remaining component of it to the ground, and let innocent world forget what the did, and the hope the guilty never rest. 

Maybe she wants to take them down in an act of vengeance, maybe she wants to take them down because of what they did to Root, or because of what they did to her. Or because Root would want to take them down because of what they did to Shaw. 

And if Root were here she would do just that. She would scare that guy out of his wits without an ounce of reserve. 

For Root. She thinks. Not for herself.

Shaw stands up and saunters over to this guy to get his attention, it works to her advantage fortunately. She leans over the table. Swiftly she un holsters the gun and presses it into his side in a way that no one can see, “come with me if you want to live, along with all these people,” she whispers, he obliges. He doesn’t seem fearful to her, a normal thing as she knows Samaritan’s agents all too well. She leads him outside anyway. 

The Machine directs her to a spot out back where they are safe from cameras. 

Shaw presses the gun against the side of his head, “you already know why I’m doing this,” she states.

He doesn’t answer at first, god knows what that organization probably did to this guy. He probably swore his life away, but she doesn’t care. 

“I don’t--” she cocks the gun before he can finish. 

“Are they still running?” Shaw asks shoving him with the barrel.

“Is who still running?” No response, she shoves him more. “If you knew so much about _them_ you know they fell apart months ago,” he says then, “I don’t work for them anymore, no one does.”

“Not a good answer,” Shaw presses, “where did you work? Give me a location,” She demands. 

“Anywhere they wanted me to.” 

Shaw is angry now.

“Honestly,” he continues, “the work I did was remote.”

“Do you want me to just shoot you right now?” Shaw threatens.

“Go for it,” he challenges, “it won’t give you whatever answers you want. I’m tell you the truth.”

_“He’s right, Shaw.”_ The Machine then imparts, but that’s not a good enough answer. She wants to know where. Anywhere, any physical location she could connect to them. 

Any location Root could be. 

“He has to know something,” she says through gritted teeth. 

“Who are you talking to?” He asks, Shaw knees him in the side in response. He looks at her, and it strikes her then what this man truly stands for. She sees that same cold uncaring look his eyes that she looked at for months. She sees this man for who he is. And she delivers a few more blows before she pulls him by the back of his shirt and says “you’re going to go back in there and say you got into a fight, or I will actually kill you.”

She knows he is going to listen, storming away she walks down the street into the night. 

She doesn’t pay attention to what direction she goes. She doesn’t care. The first traffic camera she sees she stops at and stares into it. She touches the spot on her neck that she checks a million times a day for a chip that never has been and never will be there. There is nothing. After more than enough time than it would take for her to be identified, nothing happens. Nobody captures her, no mysterious car pulls up to to issue her a new cover identity. Nothing. 

For the first time she knows this is real. For the first time, at least for the time being, she realizes that Samaritan is no longer a threat. The remanence of the organization will fade out over time. Eventually there will be nothing. 

They did their job. Her, the Machine, and everybody who was lost along the way. They did what they set out to do, but in the end this is no victory. 

She can pick up the pieces of her life that Samaritan took from her, and the pieces of everyone else who they hurt. However, in the end so much has been lost. Who knows how many other people they took who will never be found again.

She wants nothing more than to watch Samaritan burn to the ground, but she needs answers first.

“There was no number, was there?”

_Silence._

Shaw sighs, “Find me a way home,” the Machine obliges. She feels a new drive in herself since her almost breakdown earlier that day. They can’t stop her anymore. 

“It’s what Root would have wanted.”

Is it ever.


End file.
